'Please don't sell my school': FACE community protests after Quebec nixes renovation project

Parents and students formed a human chain outside FACE school in downtown Montreal on Monday morning to protest the Quebec government's decision to cancel major renovation plans for the building, citing rising costs.

As a result of the decision, approximately 1,300 students from kindergarten to Grade 11 will be permanently relocated to two different locations beginning in the next school year. 

"Our high school and our elementary school will be separated forever and for us, it's such a heartbreak because our community is built on the tall ones looking after the small ones," said FACE parent Clothilde Légaré-Dionne.

"It's like family here," she said.

Her daughter, Grade 5 student Mirka Ralaisoa-Dionne, added she's also "very sad" about the move. 

Alex Norris, city councillor for the Jeanne-Mance district, attended the protest in solidarity with the school community.

He also pointed to what makes the school so special.

"This is a unique community in the province of Quebec where two school commissions co-exist. We have the anglophone and francophone students studying music together with both primary and secondary students altogether in the same building," he said.

And then, there's the building itself. 

"It's a unique heritage building," Norris said. "It has a 600-seat auditorium, it's ideally built for this kind of educational mission and it's a real tragedy seeing this school split up."

FACE was founded 50 years ago, but the school's current building on University Street, just on the limits of the downtown core, was built in two phases, one in 1914 and the other in 1924.

And like many old buildings, it's in need of repairs. 

In 2019, the French school service centre, the CSSDM, sounded the alarm, asking the Quebec government for up to $153 million to carry out the necessary work and relocate students to another building during renovations.

Education Minister Bernard Drainville, however, said on Tuesday that the price tag of the project had since ballooned from initial estimates of $243 million to $375 million, prompting the government to pull the plug.

"It's budgeted at $375 million and we haven't even opened up the walls which date back to 1914," Drainville said, adding that the cost doesn't even account for what it would take to renovate the two transitory schools.

Drainville reiterated what the school said in a letter sent to parents last week, on the necessity of putting a "definitive stop" to the renovation project due to "the current budgetary context and in the interest of the sound management of public funds."

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According to figures obtained by Radio-Canada, schools across the province are facing overcrowding. That means an estimated 34,500 students will either be sent to other schools, put in spaces not intended as classrooms or assigned to modular classrooms.

Drainville also stressed that FACE's fine arts program would be preserved but at two separate locations.

"The essence of a school is in the teaching that is given there," he said, insisting that won't change.

Starting in the fall, elementary students will move to a school on Christophe-Colomb Avenue, roughly four kilometres away from FACE's current location.

High school students will be relocated to a school on St-Urbain, some two kilometres away, but only in 2032.

Both buildings at the new locations are undergoing or will be undergoing repair work, with an estimated price tag of $200 million.

Once the transfers are complete, the CSSDM said it plans on selling the original building. 

Fannie Proulx-Arpin, a parent at FACE, said she was very upset by the news. 

"This decision makes no sense," she said. "It's like we have a lack of schools in downtown." 

Norris also expressed concern over plans to sell the school.

He worries the building will sit empty for years with Quebec taxpayers on the hook to maintain it and keep it from falling down. 

"It's difficult to find a buyer that wants to invest the money to bring it up to modern standards and wants to reuse a gigantic auditorium," Norris explained. 

Parents and students are hoping their pleas to keep their school intact will be heard in Quebec City. 

"Please don't sell my school, cause I very love her," said Ralaisoa-Dionne.